Absolute power, as we have always known, corrupts absolutely; it corrupts because it does not do the trick for the individual.
IRVIN D. YALOMHeidegger makes the distinction between being absorbed in the way things are in the world and being aware that things are in the world.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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This was due to a kind of increased existential awareness that resulted from this confrontation with the death of another. And I think it brought them in touch with their own death, so they began to experience a kind of preciousness to life that comes with an experience of its transiency.
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Heidegger makes the distinction between being absorbed in the way things are in the world and being aware that things are in the world.
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The drive for power is not uncommonly motivated by this dynamic. One’s own fear and sense of limitation is avoided by enlarging oneself and one’s sphere of control.
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When we have forgotten ourselves and become absorbed in someone (or something) outside ourselves
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Does a being who requires meaning find meaning in a universe that has no meaning?
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If you want to choose the pleasure of growth, prepare yourself for some pain.
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Live your life to the fullest; and then, and only then, die. Don’t leave any unlived life behind.
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This is what makes us human. But it comes with a costly price: the wound of mortality. Our existence is forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom, and, inevitably, diminish and die.
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Despite the staunchest, most venerable defenses, we can never completely subdue death anxiety: it is always there, lurking in some hidden ravine of the mind.
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The death anxiety of many people is fueled … by disappointment at never having fulfilled their potential.
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We take pleasure not only in the growth of our patient but also in the ripple effect—the salutary influence our patients have upon those whom they touch in life.
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Look out the other’s window. Try to see the world as your patient sees it.
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You know, I think everybody I’ve seen has come from some other therapy, and almost invariably it’s very much the same thing: the therapist is too disinterested, a little too aloof, a little too inactive. They’re not really interested in the person, he doesn’t relate to the person.
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Specialness as a primary mode of death transcendence takes a number of other maladaptive forms.
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In a study we did of bereavement, we found that rather impressive numbers of widows and widowers had not simply gone back to their pre-loss functioning, but grown.
IRVIN D. YALOM